Nepali Netbook

By Maila Baje Our brand-new Nepal Communist Party (NCP) has come with a shelf life of five years, if you believe Dr. Baburam Bhattarai. The former Maoist chief ideologue, ever since ditching the once-imposing party to form his Naya Shakti, has kept his ideological fealty very close to his chest. …

By Maila Baje Amid the dreariness of daily political narrative, it is refreshing once in a while to proceed along parallelisms no matter how outlandish they might sound. How does a country’s journey from point A to B end up at a lower-case e in light italics? And can we …

By Maila Baje With the first waves of tributes to the late Atal Behari Vajpayee now subsiding, it may not be inopportune to reflect on the man through the prism of political developments in Nepal. A steadfast friend of Nepal, Vajpayee was at ease with Nepal’s royalty and its detractors …

By Maila Baje If Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ is delighting in his status as prime minister in waiting, he’s also demonstrating an impassioned longing for the job. Ever since the unification of his Maoist stream with the Marxist-Leninists to create the Nepal Communist Party (NCP), Dahal has found himself in …

By Maila Baje As his government advances toward its six-month milestone, Prime Minister K.P. Oli must be busy wondering what has gone so wrong. Backed by a two-thirds majority in parliament, Oli expected to lead New Nepal on its first real steps toward peace, progress and prudence. Three tiers of …

By Maila Baje Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba finally has discovered why his party’s presiding deity so consistently counseled against cooperating with communists. Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala died an inveterate anti-communist and circumspect constitutional monarchist. As someone who was once a communist, B.P.’s disenchantment with our variant of ideologists – …

By Maila Baje If reality is a work in progress, our polity surely encapsulates the perpetuity of the process. With too many experiments going on at the same time – in parallel as well as in conflict – every appearance of arrival only advances our destination. After plodding on for …

By Maila Baje Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli’s six-day visit to China brought to the fore the clash between the general and the specific gripping the bilateral relationship. During his news conference at Tribhuvan International Airport upon return, Oli was justified in asserting that the visit had served to deepen …

BY MAILA BAJE While the left’s struggle to reconcile the lingering contradictions resulting from its enigmatic unity has grabbed much of our headlines, the right, too, finds itself in a complex contest to maintain relevance. The three Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) factions appear to understand the urgency of unity but …

BY MAILA BAJE From his outward acerbity and antics, Sher Bahadur Deuba looks like someone sedulously fighting for his political life. Yet, for a man in his situation, he is quite comfortably placed. Having suffered that kind of a setback in the polls he held as prime minister, the head …